We all fear that Parul is losing her mind. Sometimes I see her standing alone on the terrace, the evening wrapped around her frail form, the sadness of a day gone by mute and heavy in her eyes. These days she talks very little, eats even less and falls into prolonged silences. Sometimes I see her circling the potted plants on the terrace but she mostly remains in her tiny room on the third floor.
Seeing Parul so detached and unresponsive is unnerving. When she first came to our house, her tongue labored constantly, unloading countless recollections on us. In fact, my mother complained that her incessant chatter was driving her insane. She longed for a peaceful moment. But Parul rarely left the house. She had nowhere to go. Instead she stayed at home and helped my mother with chores, her tongue toiling in rhythmic accompaniment to her task. For every occasion Parul had a reminiscence; for every domestic discord, Parul offered a suggestion; for every concern, Parul showed compassion. Her anklets danced on the cold marble floor, moss covered staircases and long winding hallways of our house. Her multicolored cotton saris occupied the clothesline between the east and west wing of our house. Her cheap glass bangles clattered as she pumped water from the rusty veteran tube-well on the first floor courtyard, next to the printing press.
My mother still remembers how when Parul first came to our house, she stared at the confused child half hidden behind the door and exclaimed, “But she is so tiny, what can she do!” Her pigtails were infested with lice, her nose ran and her stomach was bloated by years of malnutrition. Her bony forearm displayed a variety of colourful threads with metallic enclosures that held sacred flowers to protect her from evil spirits.
Parul’s father spoke like a true salesman. “Don’t wretchedness Ma, she was a mother to her sisters at home. She can light the stove, boil rice and get water for you from the well.” After Parul’s mother death, things had become especially difficult for Parul’s father. Alone he took care of their three daughters and worked part-time in other people’s farms. But after three seasons of drought, most farmers didn’t need his attend cutting and gathering the produce. He also had considerable debt in the market and the moneylenders had started to pile up at his doorstep. Getting rice grains for even one meal a day was becoming difficult. He had carefully thought things through and decided that it might be helpful having a daughter in the city who could earn some extra money. He would take the screech to Calcutta once a month to collect her wages. He could pay for his food and rent with it and perhaps have some left over for the alcohol he craved for every evening.
Later Parul told us that she had begged her father not to send her away. She had promised to be a good girl, be more apt and take better care of her sisters. But her father had made up his mind. They walked several miles to the nearest station and then boarded a crowded local train.
When the train left the platform, she strained her neck and followed with her eyes as at the emaciated forms of her sisters ran alongside her window until they grew smaller and smaller and she could see them no longer. She then rested her head against the window bars and fell asleep.
Parul was on the train for half the day. When the exclaim reached Howrah, she was shocked at how crowded the station was. There were people pacing all around, shouting and screaming and coolies ran back and forth with huge trunks on their heads. Her father slapped the back of her head and said, “This will be your new home, Parul. You will make your old father very happy.” As she made her way toward the exit she had to squeeze through the sweating bodies and oily heads pasted against one another. She felt something tugging the end of her skirt. Looking down she saw a leper on a skate-board asking her for money. For a moment she lost sight of her father in the crowd. It was then she felt the sudden lightness of her shoulder bag. When she looked, the little bundle she had packed her clothes and little mementos of her mother and sister had disappeared from her bag.
Since then Parul has lived in our house, at first as a hesitant, diffident shadow of my mother but later as a beautiful, self-confident young woman who has kept our house alive with her constant chatter and cheerful countenance.
In the morning, she swept the floor with a thinning bamboo duster and mopped the floor energetically, dragging along a bucket of dim brown water. Sometimes while cleaning her body disappeared under the bed or a table, revealing the deep cracks on her bare heels. The gold ring on her nose glistened as beads of oil and sweat unexcited on her forehead.
Twice a week she did laundry for the entire house, pulling out the dripping clothes from the tin bucket and swinging them over her head and beating them on the bathroom floor. She stood barefoot in a stream of soapy water, her sari pulled up to her knees as she rubbed the colored material energetically between her hands. She then wrung out the water and smoothed the ceases and dried the clothes on the clothesline in the terrace.
Our home was now Parul’s home. She had lived in this house for more than twelve years. Parul slept in the narrow storeroom overlooking the terrace. One side of the storeroom was packed with potato sacks, onions and cooking oil. My mother liked to be keep her larder well stocked in anticipation of any emergency: the monsoons, the curfews, the numerous bandhs and hartals and the unexpected and powerful dreaded visits from her mother-in-law.
On the other side was Parul’s bed, neatly made every morning, the mouth of her earthenware water pot covered with a steel cup. She hung a rope between the two doors of the room and spread her printed saris, petticoats and cotton blouses on it. Her comb, hair oil, talcum power and colored bindis all lay on the dusty window-sill. From the window of her room you could see the multi-storeyed buildings of south Calcutta, the rounded dome of Victoria memorial and the longer metallic arches of the Howrah Bridge.
Like the servants in all other houses, Parul too had her own set of cups and dishes and was careful not to eat or drink from any of ours. She never sat on any of our furniture but hunkered in doorways and hallways and spread herself on her own straw mat to watch television in the evening. For the most part my mother looked at her with affection, dismissing her as a “silly little girl.” But when it came to housework, my mother made her expectations absolutely clear.
“I told you to win the stones out of the rice carefully. Munni’s father almost lost his teeth at dinner last night,” my mother rebuked Parul. “And how many times did I advise you to contain up the buckets before the taps run dry? ”
“Ma, the rice you lift has more stones than rice grains,” an unflustered Parul responded. “I did fill the buckets but Ram the sweeper came to clean the toilet today. He poured the water down the commode.”
The two of them suffered from a common malady- the need to gossip and to do it as frequently as possible. At ten years old, my mother collected considered me a child and asked me to leave the kitchen so that they could discuss more “adult” matters. These “adult” matters often turned out to be recent scandals and juicy gossip from our neighborhood, which Parul overheard at the tube-well and poured out in a low conspiratorial tone.
“Ma,” Parul said, “you know the Judge
Saheb next door, the one with three daughters.”
“Yes, I know who he is. What about him? ” my mother asked.
“He was seen in a whore house yesterday.”
“Don’t utilize such words in this house, Parul.” My mother sounded insecure, “He is a real gentleman.”
“Gentleman
indeed!” snorted Parul
. “He grabbed me on the street the other day and said, ‘Oh look how big our dinky Paro has become’. I told him straight, ‘Judge Saheb, support your hands off me.’”
“Parul, that’s not the way to talk to an old man. He is like your grandfather.”
“You can ask Bishu, the taxi driver. He himself saw the judge leave the brothel when he dropped off a customer there.”
“Bishu is drunk half the time. To him even the laundry-man
looks like the contemplate,” said Ma.
“Believe me, don’t have me, it’s your wish, but this I tell you, when the judge saw Bishu looking from his taxi, he covered his face with his umbrella and walked away quickly.”
My mother listened to the rest of the chronicle between the tinkling of kitchen utensils. Disapproval dripped from her remarks. In her eagerness to gossip, she often burnt the vegetables and over-boiled the milk, forgot to add salt to our meal or added too great.
“Guess who I saw Ma, holding hands in the movie theatre today.”
“Who is it Parul? “
“First give me ten rupees.”
“Didn’t I give you twenty rupees only last week? Do you consider money comes from trees? “
“Ma, there is a new Hindi movie, Madhuri Dixit and Anil Kapoor. I want to watch the matinee show.”
“Yes all these Hindi movies are filling up your head with these absurd notions. When we were growing up, no one watched Hindi movies, not even on television. But now it has become a tall fashion.”
“Ma if I don’t go to the theatre, how will I know who looks at who, holds hands and drinks ice-cream soda from the same bottle,” Parul said innocently.
“Ok, I will give you ten ruppees this time. But let me remind you Parul it is becoming a habit for you to ask for extra money every week. Soon I will have to take it out of your salary,” she threatened in a desperate attempt to maintain her superiority as a mistress.
On the roof, I saw Parul reading a glossy woman’s magazine, which she borrowed from the neighbourhood hair salon. It was called “Bollywood Beauties” and was illustrated with women with long intelligent hair, glowing skin, lip-sticked mouths and painted nails facing the camera with contented expressions on their faces. The magazine advised women on how to choose care of the hair, the skin and the body and how to entice unsuspecting men into wedlock. She poured over the beauty tips and then consulted my mother on how to enhance her looks. Should she wear sleeveless blouses? Would rubbing turmeric on her face make her skin glow? Would washing her hair with homemade yogurt make it softer and thicker? Her self-absorption and constant barrage of enquires annoyed my mother. A maid should be contented with housework and not worry about beauty tips. When my mother served tea to my father in the morning she complained about Parul’s fascination with physical beauty. “If she only showed half that interest in the housework, I wouldn’t have to bellow after her day and night.” My father, absorbed in his morning newspaper, said, “Munni’s mother, at her age you too spent time adjusting your sari folds and applying
kajol around your eyes. Had I not seen those charcoal eyes on the bus to College -Street that day, I would still be a free man.”
One day I asked Parul about her fascination with these magazines.
“Why are you always reading these magazines, Paruldi? ” I teased, “You want to impress your boyfriend? ”
“Don’t say such things, Munni. If my father sees me with a boy, he will break my legs.”
“What is wrong in having a boyfriend,” I said, “If you have to marry someone and spend the rest of your life with him, it’s important to see if you are compatible. I will definitely have a boyfriend when I grow up.”
Parul covered my mouth with the magazine, ” Hush. Your mother will hear you.
You speak like such a grown up sometimes.”
“Let me tell you straight. All this rubbing milk cream on your face and lemon in your hair will not help. You need to go out there and woo someone. Or else you will sit here till your hair turns grey.”
Parul blushed, “No no, my father will find a good boy for me. He will be from our own village.”
“You have been saying that for the past five years. I can just see your father gathering up an army of grooms for you,” I said. Then I felt abominable. I wanted to take back my cruel words. But they were already out there and I could see the cloud they left on Parul’s features.
Parul still believed in a impartial world. She fasted on distinct days of the week and observed dietary prohibitions on other days. On Tuesdays for instance, she didn’t touch rice and flour until after sunset and only after she had bathed, completed her evening puja and blown into her conch shell. Once a month, she fasted all day and went to the Shiv Mandir with flower garlands, incense sticks, half a coconut and a box of sandesh. She believed that shapely Lord Shiva would get her a groom just like him.
Every third Sunday of the month, Parul’s father, Madhubabu, visited us. He was now a middle-aged man with a receding hairline and very dark complexion. White talcum powder coalesced in dull white beads at the base of his face and neck. He bellowed Parul’s name from the street below and then came up to the second floor staircase to wait for her. For me he always brought toffee and puffed rice . “See what I have here, didimoni,” he said ruffling my hair. Eventually Parul appeared from behind the curtain, carrying a cup of tea and two biscuits on a saucer. He then poured the tea on the saucer and blew into it loudly and with a pleasurable click of his tongue he took a sip. “Aaaah.”
“I have some fine news to affirm you, Paro,” he exclaimed, “I know you will be so joyful.”
“What” asked Parul, sounding wary.
“Its about your sister, Khuki, I am getting her married.”
“Getting Khuki married,” Parul repeated mechanically as if the string of words sounded absurd to her ears. “But she is only fourteen.”
Her father looked hurt. “I thought you would be contented for your sister. Instead you make a face like Ma Lakshmi’s owl. What has this city done to you? “
“Baba,” Parul said wearily, “You were the one who sent me to the city, remember? I didn’t want to approach then, did I? Khuki is still in school. You say she has a sharp head. Why don’t you let her stay in school? “
Her father paid no attention to her advice. “Enough of that school, Paro.” he said waving his hand, “Too much reading and writing spoils a girl. Besides if she reads too much, no boy in the village will marry her. I thought you would be happy to hear about your sister’s wedding. She always talks about you. She said only this morning: Didi will remove me a aesthetic wedding sari from Calcutta. For my wedding gift she will give me real gold earrings, not the ones covered with gold water.”
“I cannot afford real gold earrings, you know that. I can hardly afford to buy her the sari.”
Her father frowned. “Money, money and money, that’s all you can mediate of these days. Did you think how beautiful your sister will sight in red sari and gold earrings? Is her happiness no longer important to you? “
“But Baba, you catch most of my wage every month anyway…” Parul started and stopped. It was futile to argue. She looked at me and I knew what would follow. She would ask my mother for an approach from her salary and take out a loan from the local women’s cooperative and take a bus to Barabazaar. There she would comb the market for a red sari with gold thread at a reasonable price. She would also give away her only set of gold rings, the pair she received from my mother when I was born. She would send her father away a happy man, ready to make wedding preparations. This wouldn’t be his last visit either or the end of his incessant stream of demands. He would return next month, with an equally compelling reason to ask for money: to treat his asthma, or repair of the leaky tin roof over their heads or to buy a warm blanket for the coming winter nights. And Parul would meet each of his demands obediently, like an ox, which carries a heavy yolk on its shoulder and never questions its fate. Sometimes, she asked my mother if it ever crossed her father’s mind that she was the oldest of the sisters, that her time was running out and that she too was waiting for a groom.
“Is it fair that while I mop the floor, wash your dishes and iron your clothes all day, my sisters get to wear red saris and scold children. Tell me Ma, is there any future in my life? Will I maintain supplying paper notes to my father till the day I die? ” asked Parul one day after her father left.
My mother was helpless in the face of Parul’s unhappiness. She knew she should provide guidance but she was perplexed about what to do. No doubt had it been up to her, she would have found a groom for Parul long ago. One day my mother tried to talk to Madhubabu about Parul’s alliance. “We were thinking, Munni’s father and I, that Parul is of age now. When you brought her here she was a tiny girl, but scrutinize at her, she is former enough to have children of her own. Why don’t you start looking for a suitable boy? It will be good for her.”
Madhubabu did not receive this piece of advice with kindness. “Ma, I know what is good for my daughter and what is bad. If I marry off all my daughters, who will seize care of me in my customary age? We don’t have money in the bank like people who live in big houses. Our sons and daughters are all we have. You can anguish about your daughter and I will worry about mine.” Ma never mentioned the subject to Madhubabu again.
………………………………………………………………………………………………
It was around mid-August, after she came back from her sister’s wedding in Mednipore, that Parul’s behaviour began to change. She had rarely stayed outside the house before except to catch an occasional Hindi movie at the local theatre or run dinky errands for my mother. “Where will I go in the afternoons? ” she demanded, “The Canival and Zoo gardens are for people with money and motor cars.”
But now she left the house almost every afternoon, returning in the early part of the evening. Her attitude was less friendly, her pace more hurried, her answers terse. She left a thick coat of dust under the bed while sweeping and cut her finger while peeling potatoes. My mother grew concerned about Parul’s unique routine and her extended absences from our house. On our way back from my art class, we saw her hanging out at street corner stalls with young men in checked lungis and greyish banyans.
So she is hanging out with these loafers from the railway slum, my mother sniffed.
She is bent upon sullying our family name. Ma has a deep aversion to young men who exhaust their time at street corner gatherings and tobacco stalls. She was sure they were either conspiring to break into a house and steal gold jewelry or to run away with their daughter.
If only they tried doing something worthwhile with their time, she muttered,
Our country would make so much progress. As if sensing her displeasure, these men often waved to us when we passed, flashing their
paan stained teeth and asked, “Hello
Mashima, everything good today? “
Parul seemed to be blissfully unaware of our concerns. She spend more and more time in front of my mother’s dressing table, applying kaajal to her eyes, lipstick to her lips and talcum powder to her face and neck. She wrapped a sparkling sari around her body, adjusting the length of her anchal and pressing out the folds with her fingers. She slipped her glass bangles onto her slender wrists and looked at the mirror approvingly. She then slipped out of the back door of the house looking like a brightly wrapped candy, shimmering in the sun. A trail of sweet smelling talcum powder marked her departure.
One day from the top of a hand pulled rickshaw we saw her sitting on a park bench, her arm wrapped around a man. They seemed to be engaged in deep conversation. My mother exclaimed so loudly that the rickshaw puller almost dropped the rickshaw. That day my mother, determined to set aside an raze to these mid-day escapades and disgraceful behaviour, restricted Parul’s activities to inside the house.
************************************************************************
On the first floor of our house, there is a printing press. It operates with primitive technology. The round immense plate in the center of the metallic structure, maneuvered manually, slaps against the letters dipped in black ink with an expertise and leisurely pace born of familiarity. The printed-paper is scattered on the floor in untidy piles. The coo-ing of the pigeons gathered in the ceiling beams is drowned by the bellow of the press. Our dark cat sits under these beams eyeing the pigeons and licking her paws in anticipation. The room reeks of bird dropping and machine oil. A bare 100-watt bulb hangs from the ceiling on a long wire, illuminating the press’s metallic plate and lever. The rest of the room lies in shadow.
My father had rented out this space several years back to a widow and her three sons. When the woman’s husband passed away suddenly, the widow had come to my father for help. “Dipenbabu, it was my husband’s dream to run a printing press. Even on his death bed he talked about starting this business. I want to carry out his last wish. I want his soul to rest in peace.”
She paid a nominal rent at first and my father was sure that would change once her business took off. Her business did prosper as the printing orders started to pour in, and the number of employees increased but she continued to pay the same rent. After a few years when my mother was expecting, my father asked her to move her business elsewhere. “The vibration from the press has already left cracks and fissures in the walls of the west wing of our house,” he said, “We don’t want the roof to fall on our head. Besides, all this noise is not good for a new born baby.” But the widow refused to move. Rent was low and business was gracious in the Bhawanipore area. One of her sons had grown up to be a well -known lawyer and she was not afraid of legal action. Thus what had begun with sympathy and admiration for a woman in distress quickly turned into a bitter lawsuit to be resolved in Calcutta High Court.
Parul however refuses to hold notice of our disapproving attitude toward this business. Since being restricted to the house, she has begun taking trays of tea and biscuit to the press-room and throwing coquettish glances at the employees. Her antics have caused a stir in the press-room.. The man who operates the machine, the man who sets the alphabets and dips them in ink and the older man with grey hair who proof-reads the printed material with a magnifying glass all fumble with their work and glance at her; pretend to be engaged in their tasks and then exchange swift, meaningful looks with her as she loiters around the doorway, the windows and the back alley. After her mid-day wash, she hangs her blouse, petticoat and underclothes to dry from the clothes-line outside the press-room window. Sometimes she takes her bucket downstairs and bathes by the water tank. The men look shyly at her wet sari-clad body as she wrings out water from her hair. My mother, outraged by her behaviour, gives Parul a fierce talk on womanly restraint.
“You shameless girl.” When excited my mother’s voice rises to a piercing scream. “You reflect I don’t know what you’re up to, behaving like a slut in front of all those grown men. I will teach you a lesson, Parul. I’ll jabber you to live a decent life in a respected family. I will not let you rub lime and ink on our face. You will stop up in that storeroom of yours and not come down for any reason. Any reason at all, you hear me!”
My mother pushes Parul inside the tiny room packed with cooking oil, potato and onion sacks. “We will send your meals up here until you come to your senses,” she says then slams the door with a decisive thud.
And so Parul stays up in her room. Months pass and Parul retreats into a deep and prolonged silence. Sometimes she comes out and stands on the terrace, an empty expression on her face, a look of disinterest in her eyes. I take food to her room and leave it outside her door. She leaves it mostly untouched. Her father comes to see her but she refuses to listen to his pleas. Madhubabu spends his day sitting outside her door and then reluctantly takes the evening train home.
Then the
Kalbaishakis come abet. The winds pick up speed, rattling our doors and windows. The sky darkens and lightening tears across it, followed by the loud clap of thunder. Ma and I run around the house gathering the clothes from the clothesline, closing the window shutters and locking them in place. Our gloomy cat chases us, tangling in our legs and making us rush.
That’s when we peep Parul vomiting next to the water-tank. For a moment my mother does not fade. Her face is ashen. And then her eyes travel down to Parul’s belly. The bulge is barely visible. She grabs Parul’s hair and drags her to the courtyard. She slaps Parul face and screams, “Sigh me, you
Mukhpuri, whose sin are you carrying in your belly.” My father rushes down to see what the commotion is all about. The customers and employees from the press-room, gather around the courtyard. My mother slaps Parul’s face again and screams, “I let you in this house, thinking you are a decent girl. You ate our food, slept under our roof and then turned our house into a brothel. You didn’t care for one moment about our reputation. Tell me, hatatchari, who are you sleeping with? ” Ma bangs Parul’s head against the brick wall. More men procure in the shadows as my father and I stand there horrified as my mother slaps, punches and twists Parul’s hands, demanding to know who the father is.
Then the rain comes. Huge heavy drops pierce holes in the sky and drench us all. As if waking from a nightmare, my father pulls my mother away from Parul. Parul then throws herself at my mother’s feet. “Ma,” she weeps, “I have made a mistake and you can punish me whichever procedure you want but don’t hit me any more, please!” My mother looks up at the mad sky and the drenched, sari clad figure at her feet. A flash of lighting lights up their figures. The men shift their feet uneasily. At last, my mother says, “Parul, go up to your room. I want you and all your belongings gone from our house tomorrow morning. Don’t show your face in this neighborhood again.”
The next day, before daybreak, Parul departs. She is nowhere to be found – not in her room, on the terrace or near the water tank. With her the printing press operator, an older man with thinning hair and failing eyes disappears too. They leave our front door ajar. The key hangs from my mother’s jewelry-chest; some of her jewellery is missing.
That afternoon, there is a big demonstration outside our house. Angry men are shouting slogans. These are Parul’s friends from the slum across railway track. Earlier that day, the laundry man had stopped by to announce freshly ironed white pyjamas and starched dhotis. When he heard about Parul’s departure from our house, he quickly informed the slum inhabitants.
Spectators win on the terraces of neighbouring houses to behold the spectacle. Women peek out from behind the window curtains. Children spill out of a nearby school to cheer them on. Someone throws a rock through the kitchen window. My father, who is on the telephone, says, “
Daroga babu, you must send the police now! Yes, they have already broken some windows. The girl stole my wife’s jewelry. They are asking for a compensation….huge amount…..no no I cannot pay it.
Are moshai, I don’t have black money under my pillow, I have a regular nine to five job.”
Meanwhile my mother wails in the living room, “What did I not do for her? Cream, soap, shampoo, towels… whenever she wanted anything, did I say no? If we ate fish, we place one on her plate. When Munni drank milk, we poured her a glass too.” Choton
Mashi who lives two houses down the road tries to console her. “
Didi, did we not see what all you did for her? The truth is you can’t trust the servants these days. It’s in their nature to do such things.”
The commotion of the slum crowd rises over the roar of rush hour traffic, the honking of horns and the shouts of street vendors. I climb up the stairs to Parul’s room. Her rubber slippers with their broken straps lay abandoned on the landing. In her room, everything is as it was, her comb, hair-oil, her mirror and the clothesline sagging beneath the weight of her saris. Her overturned water pot has left a small pool on the floor. I walk out on the terrace and lean on the banister just as Parul did in her last days in our house. The sunlight feels warm on my face and I am overcome with a sense of loss.
The dome of the Victoria memorial glistens in early morning light. The vast expanse of the city sprawls before my eyes – the old discoloured buildings, the narrow alleys, the dusty roads and the green parks. Gazing beyond the vast labyrinth of houses and the rising dust, I suddenly hope that Parul will set up her new home, wear a red sari and vermilion dot on her forehead and someday scold her children.
On the day of the party or big family feast, don’t starve yourself prior to the banquet. That will only leave you so famished that you overindulge. Instead, eat small high-protein meals or snacks every three to four hours before the big dinner.